And Never Brought to Mind ...

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----------=BigCloset Retro Classic!=----------
Complete

What the song means, my dears...

"...And Never Brought to Mind..."

by Donna Lamb


Admin Note: Originally published on BigCloset TopShelf on Saturday 12-30-2006 at 1:50 am, this retro classic was pulled out of the closet, and re-presented for our newer readers. ~Erin


 

I found her in a back booth on New Years Eve in the sleaziest lesbian bar in town, Diamond Jill's on the south side. Two heavy-faced bulls sat eyeing her from their table so I approached with caution. She waved her drink at me to let me know she'd seen me and it was okay to talk to her.

Her neat cashmere office suit looked almost as out of place as my hetero-masculinity but Noelle never looked less than cute and frequently achieved beautiful. Not tonight though, she'd been drinking and crying already.

The bulls glared as I passed them. If looks could castrate.... I settled into the booth opposite her and brushed my moustache with thumb and forefinger in a gesture of not-entirely-unconscious reassurance.

"I couldn't save her, Nick," she said. "I couldn't keep her safe and now she's dead." It didn't happen often but Noelle always took the death of one of her therapy patients personally.

I nodded and signaled the bartender for two more of what ever she was drinking. It turned out to be bourbon, neat. When it arrived, I held out my shot glass to hers and we clinked them together.

"Rudie, we miss you," she murmured.

"Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," I returned as quietly.

Noelle shook her head. "There are no angels, Nick. Rudie is just gone. The answer to the question, 'to be or not to be,' is just 'not to be.' We'll never see her again."

I considered switching plays, but all that came to mind were quotes from Lear and MacBeth, hardly cheering. Before I could work out whether As You Like It held any promise, she had already burst into tears. Comforting a crying woman in a lesbian bar has to be one of the more awkward things a man might try to do; the bulls were restless. I patted Noelle's wrist awkwardly and hoped for the best.

"She didn't have to die so young," she whispered.

"She took risks," I said.

"Don't blame the victim, she didn't kill herself."

"I'm just saying, she took risks. Why she took risks, I couldn't say, but it wasn't as if no one had warned her that cruising biker bars before her surgery was dangerous. Hell, even after surgery it wouldn't be considered the better part of wisdom."

"Goddamit," said Noelle. "She just wanted to be pretty, to feel pretty. She just wanted to feel loved."

We drank.

I had handled legal work for Rudie, filing papers for new ID and change of name. Noelle had sent me more than one of her patients for such services but this was the first one that had ended up murdered.

She wiped her eyes on a bar napkin. "They caught him but will it go to trial?"

I shrugged. "He as much as confessed; the D.A.'s likely to offer a plea. His lawyer would be an idiot not to have him take it."

"A plea? What? Second degree?"

"I'm figuring Man 1. They may settle on Man 2."

"She fucking bled to death from thirty-seven slashes and he may spend, what? Six years behind bars? And isn't Man 2 supposed to be involuntary manslaughter? How can slashing someone that many times be in-fucking-voluntary?"

I glanced at the bulls. The heat in Noelle's voice had attracted their attention.

"The D.A. won't really want it to go to trial," I said. "You know she was hooking."

Noelle threw her hands up. We didn't hash that over because we both knew it didn't matter what we thought. Killing a hooker, even a transsexual hooker, should still be murder but we lived in the real world and we knew that sometimes it wasn't. Legally in a court of law, anyway. I ordered another bourbon to catch up with Noelle.

We talked about other things but the subject kept coming back to how Rudie had died. We must have talked loud enough to attract attention again.

"Someone killed your friend and he's going to get away with it?" one of the bulls suddenly asked.

"Looks that way. He's not going to pay what he should, at any rate," I said.

"That's freaking rotten," said Miss Diesel. "Justice stinks." Her companion nodded.

Being a lawyer, I couldn't really argue with that one but the tough old dyke's delicacy in saying 'freaking' instead of the full obscenity amused me and endeared her to me. "What are you drinking?" I asked.

"Boilermakers," she said, "but we'll have what youse is drinking." She hit her 's'es like a Midwesterner and the 'youse' clinched it.

"They drink bourbon in Cleveland?" I asked.

"Freaking A," she agreed, "but Stewie here is from Columbus where they waters all they booze." Stewie's amiable grin had a missing tooth.

I ordered four more bourbons and we moved to the table with our new friends. Miss Diesel turned out to be named Viv and Stewie actually was a former stewardess or 'flight attendant.' I kept my mental images to myself and Viv and Stewie refrained from looking down Noelle's blouse.

Midnight approached and a brand new year. Noelle made the toast, "To Rudie, absent but not forgotten." She'd had enough to drink that her focus seemed softened like a romantic camera shot.

Viv hesitated. "This, uh, this Rudie? A guy or a gal?"

"Yes," I said and held out my glass. Stewie clinked hers against mine and Noelle took enough care to do the same.

"Ain't we all, more or less," said Viv. She tapped her shot against ours and we drank to absent friends.

 


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Comments

A beautiful story

As a former l.e.o. for 20 years, I have seen things such as this, until I felt as if my soul was rotting. God bless the author and the inspiration. Maybe one day man will learn. T.

Ooof! (sound of me being

Ooof! (sound of me being gut-punched)
Short and powerful. I won't easily forget this one.
Now where's that Bourbon bottle...

- vessica

No doubt

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

There is no doubt that hooking is a dangerous occupation. Many a hooker has found herself cold and bloody in a dark alley for no other reason than the John didn't want to pay. But the general population hardly takes notice when it happen. The fact is murder is murder no matter who the victim is.

The justice system more often than not hardly takes notice of a hooker's murder. And if she was transgender hooker that hardly gets as much notice as a dog being hit by a car.

This story points out two very important things for the trans community. One, the justice system, as a whole, isn't sympathetic toward the transgender people in general. Two, as transgender women, we are just as vulnerable as cisgender women. Our rule of thumb should be that we shouldn't go anywhere that we wouldn't want our teenage daughter to go.

If we must be out at night, then take the same precautions that a cisgender woman would. There is no male privilege for a man in a dress. If your in a bad situation and the perps see you as a man in dress, things just went from bad to worse.

Be careful out there my sisters.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt

wow!

So few words, so much emotion, can I have the Bourbon bottle now please

Atmosphere

Not too long; just long enough to drive the point home.

S.

*sigh*

Hypatia Littlewings's picture

"Ain't we all, more or less,"
*nods*

>i<

A short, concise story that

A short, concise story that is right to the point in all aspects. People have way too much tendency to judge others by their clothing and/or looks, before they ever get to know them. I also concur with the two "bulls", what difference or matter is it whether Rudie was a girl or a guy or what s/he did for a living or whatever. She was a murder victim and that is all that should matter. Sadly it does not seem to get across to those who have sworn to uphold the law, enforce the law, or judge BY the law.
I saw it happen several times in my working career, and it sickened me a lot. I was able on two occasions to halt what I considered unfair and out of bounds enforcement of the law; because I threatened to take those same people to task federally.
A question regarding "biker bars" and the "bad vibes" that word gives off. Just like all police officers or doctors, or whomever get a bad name because of some; so do all those who enjoy and ride motorcycles. The wearing of leathers is to help prevent your body being torn up if you happen to spill the bike or crash it. Because there are those who pursue and live the "outlaw" biker style, they bring that shadow over everyone else. One biker organization that tries to push this view of bikers off the "front page", are the "Patriot Riders" who may dress and look like "outlaw bikers"; but attend many, many funerals of our fallen military members and help to take care of their families left behind.
That is how you help to remove the stigma from all biker riders.

Nice...

Nice style, nice set-up, nice twist, nice feeling at the end.

(And nice to be able to visit this site again after several 'No Internet Access' days)

Ban nothing. Question everything.

And Never Brought to Mind is

And Never Brought to Mind is a grim reminder that death is never pretty, but there are some deaths that will and should be remembered to honor the one who died.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Murder is murder regardless

Jamie Lee's picture

For the length of this story, it's very poignant and brings up a subject which can cause many opinions to be stated. Murder.

Defending oneself in the commission of an attack or home invaders, and a death results, very few will vilify the defender. And the law is likely to find the defender acted within the scope of the law.

But an outright killing brings with it baggage which is based on who was killed. If the deceased is a prominent person then the killer is sure to get what they deserve. But if the deceased is other than prominent, then their lifestyle becomes a factor in the eyes of many people.

Whether the person is a hooker, drug addict, pimp, truck driver, house wife who might be, or not, hooking on the side, a teacher, policeman or fireman, or any other job that earns a person a living, if that person is murdered in "cold blood" then a murder has been committed and should be prosecuted as such.

Like styles have no bases in determining how vigorously the killer should be prosecuted. The reason why the killer acted has no bearing on how vigorously they should be prosecuted. They killed someone in "cold blood," end of story.

However, the real world doesn't always work that way. In the real world others look down their noses at a persons' life style and rate the severity of a murder based on that life style. To these people, certain life styles mean the person is asking for it, it was a given the person was likely to be murdered. And therefore deserved what they got; some will go even further and say the world is better off.

Somewhere along the way a person stopped being a person and became their lifestyle. Somewhere along the way it mattered more what the person did for a living than that they were a person. Somewhere along the way some people decided they would determine whose life was worth more or less based on the lifestyle.

Somewhere alone the way some people decided that if they didn't like certain lifestyles they would do whatever they wanted to that person. Even though that person never forced their lifestyle onto others.

Somewhere along the way life became cheap, to be thrown away for whatever reason that suited the individual at the time. And it's these people who should be prosecuted as vigorously as possible in the hope that others with similar ideas might think twice before acting.

But in the real world wishes do not often come true.

Others have feelings too.

Swallowed...

RachelMnM's picture

The hook deeply, so deeply I expected this to be way longer, a lead into a serial, but it wrapped itself up neatly. I'm torn between saying I loved it and I'd loved it more longer, and then what? Yes, I saw the jail - the end. You catch my comment about a deep set hook? :-)

Very well done!

XOXOXO

Rachel M. Moore...

Newer reader

Podracer's picture

A good story never ages. Appropriate to the date, and powerful too.

"Reach for the sun."

Thank You

A lovely reminder that we are all in this together and when we are mindful of that reality even the very sad becomes bearable.

Joani

The difference between "leathers" and "colors"

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

I've known many bikers in my time. When Oregon past it's helmet law requiring motorcycle riders to wear a helmet I asked one of them what he thought about it. He said, "Any one who rides a motorcycle and doesn't wear a brain bucket, probably doesn't have anything to put in it."

That 's an aside, so to the point of my reply. Not all but many of the bikers wore leathers when ever the hit the open road. They may cruse around town on surface streets in regular clothes, but never when they expected to get over about 35 MPH.

I once lived about four block from one of the Brother Speed North Portland house.
Brothers Speed

While law enforcement saw/sees them as an outlaw biker club. I never saw or heard about them doing anything but hanging out at the house and riding their bikes. I will admit that seeing them with their colors on cruising around brought to mind all the negative aspects of motorcycle gangs you've seen in movies and heard about in urban legends. A friend of mine owned a rental in East Portland and rented to a group of Brother Speed members. The neighbors complained about the motorcycles being parked around the house when there was meeting and about them drinking beer outside on the property. But my friend said they took good care of the house and property and paid their rent on time.

But make no mistake. There's a difference between leathers and colors. Colors link a biker to a club. Some clubs, Brother Speed and Hell's Angels among them, have bad reputations. We all know about their colors. So when we see a biker wearing colors we get uneasy. There are many clubs that aren't outlaw clubs. Where we live we have local motorcycle club that is a Christian Club and they wear colors.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt

whew...dark pathways

kristina l s's picture
..yet with a sensitive step. Not sure nice is appropriate and yet.. Raise your glass and let your memory or thoughts take you... May the New Year be a brighter gentler one. Ni.., um, well... absent friends.. yeah, that'll work. For those that no longer.... Kristina

Intense on multiple levels

Nicely writen, short, not sweet, but powerful.

His discomfort around the lesbians -- seemed to mirror the discomfort the legal system has with crimes against prostitutes and the TG. If only the legal system was as conscious of it as the lawyer. He finds the *bull* was not what she see seemed as they learn he is truely sympathetic to the TG community and the lack of full justice in this case.

If only the law could learn from this odd group of folks drinking in Rudies memory.

To all who have passed on, may they achieve peace. You are remembered.

John in Wauwatosa

John in Wauwatosa

What John said!

A very nice job of setting up the emotional background in a few well chosen words. Ditto on what John said!
hugs!
grover-

Oddly gentle

I don't know that I'd call this powerful, but it has a deep current to it than sucks you right in. Hard to read and not be touched by what happened.

Here's to Rudie.

Karen J.

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Fiction?

chrisl's picture

Damn it's too early to be crying, is this fiction?
Sex Pro's are assualted, raped and murdered all the time, Cassandra Do (Tula) was and we don't even know if her trans history had anything to do with it.
Thank you Donna, Best wishes, Christine.

Perhaps it's changing

Here in the UK 5 women have been murdered in Ipswich, Suffolk and it looks like one person is responsible. At first the women were described as sex workers or prostitutes as if that was all that mattered, but the language is moderating and there is general disgust about the crimes. The women weren't TG, but, hopefully the same outrage would happen had they been.

I think the cheerful whore with a heart of gold is largely fiction, but what do I know?

Very good, pithy, short piece, btw.

Geoff

Five women had to die for it but...

Rachel Greenham's picture

... but yes, it does seem to have moved the debate on in this country at least. I get the impression the tabloids were caught a little off-balance by finding themselves trailing public opinion (early coverage had VICE GIRLS stuff splashed all over) instead of leading it like they imagine. They were all heroin addicts, which takes a lot of the fantasists' gloss off the work they were doing - doing the drugs to make the work bearable, doing the work to pay for the drugs. I think there's an appreciation of that now, and that the "concerned citizen" sort that probably pushed the police into pushing the streetwalkers further away from populated, surveilled areas probably contributed to the danger they were in. Also a lot more people now talking about prescribing legal heroin to addicts as a result of this.

A Man Walked Into A Bar

Sometimes life is a joke.

Donna, you brought the level of this site up another notch.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Interesting

I find it interesting that even in the TG genre that bikers get a bad rap. What the hell we bikers get a bad rap where ever we turn. It seems that the bikers become the easy way out for putting a bad ass into a story.

Please understand, I'm not bashing your story. It's sick and sad that people regardless of sex get offed in that profession. What I liked about the story was how it all came together. At the end of the day all we have to do is sit down knock down a shot with a beer back and talk it over.

Dimelza Cassidy

Bikers and biker bars

I know that all people who ride bikes, motorcycles, are not the bad-ass types of legend and film but those types do exist and there is a class of bsr where they hang out. A biker bar as mentioned in the story is not a place where bikers hang out, it's a place where bad-ass bikers hang out, or at least, that's the intended implication using the popular stereotype.

Many bikers cultivate the bad-ass image even if they themselves in reality are mild Sunday School teacher types. Why? Because the death and danger represented by riding a motorcycle in between and around murderous traffic is part of the attraction for some people, I suspect.

I have cousins, middle-aged, respectable sorts who on weekends put on their leathers and ride a couple hundred miles to see their kids. They love the exhiliration of riding bikes -- but they don't hang out in biker bars. :) They're not that crazy. And they and the bad-ass bikers are still not the only sorts who ride bikes, groups don't divide into polar opposites like that -- which is what this story is about.

There are a handful of bars in the remoter parts of California that cater to these suburban, weekend warrior-types. The rougher sorts of bikers stay away from the vanilla crowd, for the most part and have their own bars even in rural areas -- which are frequently known by the interesting name of "shitkicker" bars.

I used the term "biker bar" in the story with consideration. The sort of place I'm talking about is generally called that, even if bikers make up a small part of their regular clientele. It's because they trade on the same sort of image that the bad-ass bikers love -- danger and macho attitude. It's a place where men have bugs in their teeth and women are bow-legged from riding on the back. And you can usually recognize these bars from the outside by the particular sort of motorcycles that are parked there.

Nick, in the story, called Diamond Jill's a lesbian bar. Likely the patrons call it a women's bar. Noelle went there probably to get away from the sort of men who killed Rudie, not to seek out lesbian company. Lots of stereotyping going on there which the story subtly points out. Using the term biker bar was all of a piece with the story intent and I don't think anyone was confused about what sort of bar I meant. :)

Not all transsexuals are hookers, not all lawyers are cruds, not all lesbians are bull dykes and not all bikers are crack-using sadists. It should go without saying but sometimes we have to say it.

-- Donna Lamb, Flack

-- Donna Lamb, ex-Flack

Some of my books and stories are sold through DopplerPress to help support BigCloset. -- Donna

That's a fact

From personal experience, I have to agree with Donna. Bar clientèle tends to stratify, and each bar generally becomes known by the type of customer that frequents it. Be it biker, cowboy, redneck, blue-collar, college, or whatever. In my area there aren't many of the upper-class bars, but plenty of the lower social strata such as described in Donna's story. (And that's not a slam, I am firmly in the working class myself.)

Coincidently, I worked for awhile in a bar that was briefly taken over by a motorcycle club out of California. They ran off the other customers until they were finally run off themselves. But one thing stood out, they were fiercely protective of us waitresses, even me! So the appellation "biker bar" carries more than negative connotations, at least for me.

Hugs!
Karen J.

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

It Occurs To Me, Erin

Somebody should make a note of this story and "Memorial Day" by Dru and move them back to the front page on the Day Of Remembrance next year. In fact, perhaps there should be a special home page on the Day Of Remembrance each year, much as some of the TG web-comics do each year.

Hugs to all,
Karen J.

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

I like that idea

Maybe I'll do a sequel next November.

-- Donna Lamb, Flack

-- Donna Lamb, ex-Flack

Some of my books and stories are sold through DopplerPress to help support BigCloset. -- Donna

I concur with John

This was a very brief, yet tremendously powerful story.

Concise and well written, it conveys the scene with painful reality.

Thank you.

Nicole (a.k.a. Itinerant)

--
Veni, Vidi, Velcro:
I came, I saw, I stuck around.

Thanks for the great comments

I really sat down to write on one of my serials but this opening scene occured to me in the car on the way home and I had to see how it would come out. Like Angela said, "A Man Walked Into a Bar." Ow. ;)

-- Donna Lamb, Flack

-- Donna Lamb, ex-Flack

Some of my books and stories are sold through DopplerPress to help support BigCloset. -- Donna

Vignette

Nice, short, and sweet. You created a mood, you set the drinks, and when we drank it had meaning. What more could anyone ask for in a short story?

I swear, the writing around here was never bad, but this last year it's been downright excellent. Great authors have appeared from --- well, wherever they were, and some of the rest have become better.

Aardvark

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

Um, Termite Fancier?

Aardvark,

are you entering Erin's BC contest?

I have one in edit, you need to do one to counter the awfull drag-down effect mine will have on the overall quality of these entries.

Donna, once again. Nice, tight, consise writing. I could easily see O'Henry or Twain in his later years write like this. Very much in the tradition of the short story. I'm jealous!

Oh,

a man in dirty overalls, heavy boots and wearing a hardhat with a light on the front walks into a bar.

The bartender yells, "Get out, we don't serve miners here!"

There are worse one, be warned.

John in Wauwatosa

John in Wauwatosa

A Man Walks Into a Wisconsin Bar

See "Love Actually."

Happy New Year to all the cheeseheads . . . and non-cheeseheads!

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)